


next, tentative steps

by elfin



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 05:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19125349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfin/pseuds/elfin
Summary: They've won their freedom, at least for the time being. So what happens next?





	next, tentative steps

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS for the final episode

The Ritz is lovely, as usual, better than usual if anything. The food tastes just that little bit richer, the champagne that little bit sweeter. Happy isn’t a word Crowley has ever understood completely. He doesn’t know if he’s ever been truly happy before. He’s a fallen angel after all. Hell isn’t a nice place to keep having to go back to and the spectre of returning is always present, every single day. 

Until this day.

He feels lighter somehow; they’ve won their freedom, at least for the time being, some space to breathe.

 

‘Do you think... they’ll ever call us back?’

They’re walking through a miraculously quiet Covent Garden. It’s late, dark (or as dark as it gets in central London in the summer). The air’s warm from the heat of the day. 

Aziraphale replies, ‘Oh, I do hope not.’ It’s in that tone that’s uniquely his; worried and hopeful at the same time. Concerned about not knowing, but almost certain he doesn’t want to know. Crowley’s heard it so many times over the years, but tonight he isn’t sure what it means.

‘You’ve got it easy, Angel,’ he points out. ‘Heaven’s all gleaming white walls and spotless glass. You’ve seen what I have to put up with!’

‘I have. And it’s for your sake that I hope they don’t ever call us back. That place... Hell... it was horrible. Worse than I’d ever imagined it would be. I feel like I need to wash under my skin to get the disagreeable smell out. Not to mention that greasy feeling….’ He stops walking, putting a hesitant hand on Crowley’s arm to halt him too. ‘I can’t stand the thought of you down there. With them. It would kill me.’ 

Crowley stares at the pale hand on his sleeve because he doesn’t know how to respond to that. Aziraphale looks away, ahead, but he slips his arm through Crowley’s and starts them on their way again. 

Crowley’s so surprised he goes along with it. They get some sideways glances but no one says anything. No one dare, he makes sure of it. Otherwise, who knows what insults they might be subjected to, and he doesn’t want Aziraphale to disengage because he’s drawing unwanted attention. He thinks they must look like an odd pair; though his long, lanky form half-sauntering, half-slithering next to Aziraphale’s shuffling stride. 

He’s always felt... something whenever he’s been with Aziraphale. But since being Aziraphale, something’s changed. The feelings are stronger, running through him like blood. At odd intervals in the past he’s made attempts to shift their relationship into something else. But all his attempts have been thwarted, of course. He’s never understood why though, because he sees the way the angel looks at him, and he’s sure it’s not just friendly affection. But some moments stick in his mind brighter and sharper than others, even after six thousand years, and one of those moments is Aziraphale telling him, ‘you go too fast for me’, back in the sixties.

He looks down again at Aziraphale’s arm in his, and thinks maybe the angel has finally caught up. Or maybe he slowed down. 

 

They reach Soho in time, sometime just after midnight, and stop outside the shop. Behind this new reality, Crowley can still see the place alight, can recall stepping inside the burning inferno, yelling - screaming - the angel’s name at the top of smoke-filled lungs, searching the flames with tear-filled eyes. 

‘Did a good job, didn’t he?’ Crowley remarks, the light words disguising the sudden and unexpected need to grab his best friend’s hand and never let go. It is, of course, the greatest understatement in the history of understatements; he’s grateful Aziraphale just nods and lets it pass. 

‘Why don’t you come in? I’ve been saving a new vintage Chateau Latour I’m sure will be divine.’ He’s unlocking the door and Crowley gives his answer simply by following him inside.

‘New vintage?’

‘It was in the shop when it burned down. Adam replaced... everything. More or less. I’m certain it’ll taste the same as it would have done before the fire.’

‘Ah. Well, we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?’

There’s a case of it, not a bottle, and it tastes delicious. 

They sit side by side on the ancient settee that’s been in the shop since Aziraphale opened it, sometime after the French Revolution. Five bottles down, Aziraphale asks Crowley,

‘What did you make of Heaven?’

Crowley, in his temporary drunken state, takes the question very seriously and spends a few minutes and an entire glass of wine carefully considering his answer.

‘Cold,’ he finally states with absolute conviction.

‘Cold? Is that all?’

‘That’s what it is. I mean, you’d think - given that Heaven’s supposed to be this place that’s all about peace and forgiveness, filled with happy souls and angels who are supposed to love everything - that it would be warm. Like Scandinavia. Candles and log fires and glowy lights. Fairy lights! Everywhere! But it’s not any of that. It’s pristine. Un-lived in. Unloved. That thing you kept saying whenever we were in Tadfield, that someone - Adam - loved the place intensely. Shouldn’t Heaven be that multiplied by millions? But it isn’t. It’s just... cold. Not how I remember it.’

He drops his head to the hand-sewn fabric and gold-leaf covered back of the settee, exhausted by all the thinking. Then he rolls it to the left to look at the angel. Who’s looking at him in a way he can’t remember seeing before. 

‘What’s wrong?’ 

‘It’s just.... I’ve never thought of it like that.’

‘Sorry. You did ask....’

‘No. Don’t apologise. You’re right. Hell was everything I thought it would be and worse; so much dejection and despair. A filthy, crowded place built for suffering. That’s why I can’t stand the thought of you being down there. You don’t belong there, you’re not like the other demons. But... maybe I don’t belong up in Heaven either.’

Crowley waits a beat, the points out gently, ‘We both belong here.’ 

Aziraphale gives him a strange, tight smile; a little sadness, a little joy. ‘I think you might be right.’

Silence falls between them, and within it they slowly tip sideways until their shoulders are touching and each of them is holding up the other in some small way.

‘Thank you.’ Crowley realises he hasn’t said it yet. This seems to be a good time. ‘Thank you for going down there. For saving me.’

‘Oh. It was nothing, really. I enjoyed it. In a way.’ His expression suggests it was in a way that has everything to do with Crowley and nothing to do with Hell. But his shoulders drop back and he seems to relax again. 

‘It was a risk,’ Crowley points out.

‘Not really, when you consider how accurate Agnus Nutter’s prophecies are.’

‘Still, if we’d chosen the wrong faces....’

‘Who else would we have chosen? Really? Who else do we have except for each other?’

Maybe that should be a depressing thought but it isn’t. It makes Crowley smile. ‘Who else do we need?’

‘Well… no one. I can’t say I’ve ever needed, nor… wanted anyone else.’ 

Aziraphale is wearing that expression of his; like he isn’t sure if happiness is the correct response to the situation he’s found - or more often landed - himself in. In the past it’s never bothered Crowley but tonight he finds it does. 

‘What do you want?’ he asks quietly. ‘I mean, what do you really want? If you could have anything your heart desired, and there wouldn’t be any consequences, what would you want then?’

‘But… there are consequences.’

‘Not for us. Not at the moment.’

Aziraphale seems to consider his reply. ‘Well, then. I’d want….’ He flounders. 

Crowley murmurs, ‘Say it.’ But he’s sure the angel isn’t going to, convinced he’s going to bound up, away, out of the situation, change the subject. Anything but answer the question.

So it’s to his abject surprise that Aziraphale turns his head, meets his serpentine gaze head on and says, ’You. I’d want… you.’

He knew, of course, before hearing it. But hearing it makes it real, takes it from the safety of his imagination and puts it out in the open where it’s fragile, where the wrong word, the wrong deed could break it. Or maybe not, given the behaviour Aziraphale’s put up with from him over the centuries. 

‘I’m sorry, my dear, but I thought you knew.’

He’s been silent too long, made Aziraphale worry that he’s said the wrong thing. ’I did. I do.’ It comes out in a rush. ‘I just... I didn’t ever, actually, think I’d hear you say it.’

‘It has taken me a while, I’ll admit.’

‘Six thousand years.’

‘Oh, come now. It hasn’t been that long.’ He hesitates. ‘Has it?’

Crowley pauses. ‘No. Not quite.’ He can’t really remember a specific moment - just a growing awareness over time, a shift from bumping into the only other celestial being on earth every so often, to seeking him out, to them seeking each other out. 

‘You’ve been very patient with me.’

‘I’m still here. I’ll always be here.’

Aziraphale lights up but asks cautiously, ’Have I waited too long?’ 

It takes Crowley a moment to understand. ‘No! No. I mean… I think the humans have an expression, ‘blue balls’…’ 

The angel elbows him in the ribs and he laughs. He actually laughs. It feels really good to do it.

‘So…. Can we…? Because I’d very much like to…. If you don’t mind, of course….’ 

‘What?’ He can’t seem to shift the smile from his face. ‘What would you very much like?’

‘I’d like to touch you.’ He says it like he’s asking a sommelier if the restaurant has a particularly rare vintage in its cellars. ‘Only if you’re… happy with physical intimacy.’

‘Angel, you have literally been inside my body, I’ve been inside yours. I’m not sure how much more physical we can get’

’I don’t think that’s what the humans mean with their definition of intimacy.’

‘I think it’s exactly what they mean.’ He lets the cheeky smirk play across his lips as he closes the gap between them by just a fraction in invitation. Aziraphale doesn’t disappoint him. Tentatively, he leans in and wipes that smirk from his mouth with the most chaste of kisses.

When he sits up again, he ’s beaming, happier than Crowley’s ever seen him, through six thousand years and so many things to be happy about.

‘I’m not exactly sure what to do next,’ Aziraphale admits, although going by his expression he’s more than willing to experiment, to find out. 

‘We’ll work it out,’ Crowley promises. ‘We always do, in the end.’


End file.
